Unholy, Dirty, and Beautiful
by smileinthedark
Summary: Takao is ten when the Midorima family moves next door with their four-year-old son, and just like that his heart is captured, tangled up in an inky black web that taints and ruines like wildfire. - Warnings for shota/underage, especially in the form of sexual fantasy.


AN: Warnings for shota, mostly in the form of Takao's fantasies.

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The absurdly tall teenager that Takao sees in the back of the club has heavy black rings circling his green eyes and Takao recognizes him instantly. Even sandwiched between a pigtailed girl with bubblegum pink hair and a tall, tanned guy with his hands resting low on the teenager's hips, Takao sees in him the solemn five-year old who would sit alone on the swings in the playground with a book bigger than his head clutched in his tiny hands.

The book is one about the stars and even at five Shintarou can recite the constellations of the zodiac in order with an almost religious devotion. He doesn't smile when Takao asks him to recite it, but his eyes light up a little and he calls Takao a dummy for forgetting again. He takes a deep breath and begins to recite anyway, counting off the signs and not even stumbling when he gets to Aquarius and runs out of fingers.

"Shin-chan, you're so cute!" Takao exclaims, squishing Shintarou's cheeks between his hands and grinning. Shintarou pouts and clumsily tries to push Takao away even though there is a triumphant look in the younger boy's eyes that makes him seem much older than his five years and leaves Takao giddy with happiness.

"Don't call me that," Shintarou responds, sulking and clutching his book in his hands, mindfully fingering the spots where it has torn a little at the spine. His coke-bottle glasses sit lopsided on the bridge of his nose and his brilliant green eyes cross a little when he tries to look out of them.

Takao's own sister – whom he helped name and who became precious to him shortly after his fifth birthday – is running toward him across the playground, calling his name with a sunny smile. Even so, Takao thinks quiet, serious Shintarou who knows more about the stars than he ever will is the most precious thing he's ever known.

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When the Midorimas move next door Takao is ten and his mother makes him ring their doorbell with a welcome pie in one hand and his five-year-old sister's hand in the other. The woman who answers the door is tall and severe, with greying blond hair pinned neatly to the top of her head and a preschooler in her arms. When Takao goes to hand off the pie with a smile and the speech his mother had prepared for him, the child blinks owlishly and grabs at his hand. Takao smiles and the boy laughs, delighted.

Mrs. Midorima looks at her son, then at Takao's sister, and finally at Takao with sharp, considering eyes. That day, Takao gets his first job: babysitting Shintarou, who is peering down at him from his mother's arms with interest.

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Shintarou's mother is always home but the boy becomes a fixture in Takao's household anyway, spending endless hours in Takao's room devouring and re-alphabetizing the old books in his bookshelf while Takao watches from in front of the TV by his bed, amazed. Takao asks him, one day when Shintarou complains about the books being out of order again, why he sticks around.

"It's really warm here," he finally answers, tearing his gaze away from the star-shaped stress ball in his lap to shove his hands in his pockets and look up briefly at Takao, shoulders hunched to his ears and eyes darting downward. His fingernails have been bitten to nothing and the tips of his fingers are red and raw, something Takao remembers his own mother seeing once before covering her mouth in concern.

"He's only seven," she whispers to herself once Takao leaves the room, a breathy utterance that Takao realizes he's not meant to hear.

"It's cold at home," Shintarou continues, bringing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them when Takao doesn't respond.

"Mom's always there and Dad never is. They make me play the piano, since my fingers are long." Takao bites the inside of his cheek and moves to sit next to the boy, putting a hesitant arm around his shoulder and pulling him into his lap. They sit like that in silence for a while and when it's time for Shintarou to go home Takao slips the star into his school bag and waves him off.

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Takao joins his high school basketball team the third week of freshman year when he runs into the vice captain at a streetball game and the older boy – impressed with Takao's passing accuracy and spatial intuition – takes him to the side and nearly drags the agreement out of him. Shintarou is eight and sitting in a corner of the court with a book in his lap and a fake ruby that Takao's sister had convinced him was lucky at his feet. He is staring at the two of them over the edge of his book and Takao feels a twinge of guilt. His sister has long since opted to go home with her best friend instead of following Takao to the court everyday, but Shintarou seems to have no friends to speak of and stays.

The vice captain is convincing, though, and Takao agrees, something he tells Shintarou when they are on the way home, hand-in-hand. Takao thinks he's going to protest – he protests most things and already doesn't take kindly to change – but he just nods silently and says he will go to the practices for the sake of Takao's fattening wallet – for the sake of not having to stay home, Takao hears – and the possibility of Takao buying him shiruko every so often. In a moment of overwhelming affection, Takao bends down to kiss his cheek in thanks and one of the other boys heading the same direction snickers behind his hand. Takao flushes scarlet and looks away, his grip on Shintarou's hand tightening. Out of the corner of his eye, Takao sees Shintarou look down at their clasped hands with a furrowed brow, but instead of letting go he returns the squeeze and looks forward as if he hasn't.

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During practice Shintarou sits in the bleachers surrounded by his schoolbooks and everyone on the team calls him Takao's baby brother. Shintarou pouts at the insinuation and looks away, huffing and fumbling the pencil in his hands. Takao just smiles and throws Shintarou a ball, which he catches, indignant and sputtering about safety.

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When Shintarou starts coming to school with bloody, scabbed-over nail beds the team's starting shooting guard – injured and out for the season – clumsily bandages the tips of Shintarou's fingers and teaches him how to shoot from the free-throw line. Takao watches them from the other half of the court while he runs passing drills – Shintarou learning the feel of a ball in his hands and Himuro standing next to him with a faint smile – and feels something black well up inside him.

Shintarou's tall for his age and he shoots well enough that the second-string players who are running laps around the gym slow down to stare at him in awe. Takao wants to do the same - wants to trade places with the injured shooting guard and put that glow of amazement in Shintarou's eyes himself – but his insides feel tight and he harbors a sudden resentment for the older boy and the way his hands move over Shintarou's when he helps the boy position the ball. They are engaged in a deep discussion about three-pointers and Takao thinks he's ill because he can feel his throat closing up and angry pinpricks stinging the backs of his neck and wrists.

When Takao goes to sleep that night he dreams of Shintarou glued to a free-throw line in the dark with a basketball in his hands. There are nebulas exploding in the sky and they rise and ebb with a pulse of their own, the sight dropping Takao to his knees at Shintarou's feet. He is dizzy and awestruck and clutches Shintarou's knees, convinced he is seconds away from falling into the sky. Shintarou stops shooting and puts a hand on Takao's head, and he wakes drenched in sweat with his heart vibrating in his chest.

The next day Himuro has physical therapy and after Shintarou finishes his schoolwork Takao tapes up his fingers more carefully than Himuro did and lets him use one of the empty half-courts to practice his shots. Their team is small enough that they have the space and so no one complains.

No one, save for the vice captain who clocks Takao roughly in the back of the head in a gesture that Takao has learned to recognize as affectionate because the older boy has been doing it with varying frequency ever since he joined. Even though he grumbles that Takao has too much of a soft spot for the kid, he otherwise does nothing to stop the nine-year old on the court.

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When the basketball team makes it to their first championship they get eliminated in the quarterfinals and the vice captain takes them all to his empty house and breaks into his parents' liquor cabinet so they can drown their sorrows in the crude excitement that underage drinking offers. The starters get the first shots and before Takao knows it his vision is blurring and he and a couple of his teammates are tugging on the vice captain's jacket and tearfully apologizing for not being able to win. The older players grumble a little but otherwise let them be, patting them on the shoulders when they get to be too noisy.

Takao wakes at five in the morning hunched over the edge of the couch with a pounding headache and a vague recollection of one of the other guys telling him that he sure hangs out an awful lot with an elementary school kid for someone who has more then enough friends in his classes and on the team. Takao has nothing to say to that and shrugs, loudly chalking it up to his magnetic personality and thinking that it's okay if no one understands because even if Shintarou is ornery and stubborn, he still depends on Takao in ways no one else had since his mother remarried.

Head aching and still a little unsteady on his feet, Takao forgoes the thought of going to school and falls back asleep with his head cushioned on a pillow he steals off the couch.

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Their football team sucks and so instead of going to the homecoming game in junior year, Takao finds himself getting fucked into a bench by his old vice captain in the back of the empty locker room. The older boy comes back from California sporting a green stone in his right ear and a pair of stylish black-rimmed glasses that Takao never knew he needed. The older boy's hands are rough on his cheeks, the same roughness that Takao remembers from countless hours of practice, and Takao thinks that maybe he has a thing for glasses and the color green because he's harder than he's ever been and definitely, definitely doesn't want to say no.

Halfway through, Takao starts imagining Shintarou's green eyes boring down on him and Shintarou's anxious fingers – always twitchy without something solid and familiar to grasp – on his hips and doesn't say anything about it.

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Takao doesn't even realize Shintarou still has the star-shaped stress ball Takao gave him when he was seven until Shintarou hands it back to him the year he starts middle school.

"I need to give this back," Shintarou tells him, hand outstretched.

"Why?" Takao asks, staring down at the yellow star in Shintarou's hand and noticing with a jolt of panic that there are red-stained crescent moons scattered along the seams. Shintarou fidgets and his eyes dart to the ground.

"It's really unsightly for a middle schooler to still carry around a kid's toy," he finally says, pushing the star into Takao's hands.

"That's not true! Who told you that?" Takao almost shouts, squeezing the ball that has been thrust into his hands and angry for reasons he cannot place.

"No one," Shintarou answers.

"You're lying," Takao says, putting a hand on Shintarou's shoulder and tilting his chin so he can see Shintarou's eyes.

"I'm not," Shintarou says, shrugging off Takao's hands and straightening his shoulders. It makes him look years older in a way that Takao has never seen before and makes him very, very alarmed. Takao is too shocked to do anything but pocket the star and stare at the young boy standing in front of him.

"I need to stop holding on to something so childish," he says, and Takao knows as soon as it is out of Shintarou's mouth that those are words parroted from his mother.

A week later Takao is sitting in Shintarou's room and watching as the younger boy nervously and forcefully taps out a sonata on his desk and starts bleeding through his bandages. Takao hands back the star that he has been carrying with him since Shintarou returned it and the boy takes it without a word, pressing it between his fingers for a bit before taking it and putting it in the bottommost drawer of his desk.

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Some time after his sixteenth birthday Takao starts having dreams of Shintarou sprawled out like a spoiled prince in his bed and over and over Takao ruins him, latches onto him like a man drowning and breathes him in like oxygen. In his dreams Shintarou never fights, just pants heavy against his skin, open and needy as he whines for more, more, more. Takao delves into the boy's depths and loses himself. He leaves ugly, beautiful bruises on Shintarou's unblemished skin, the shape of Takao's fingers imprinted on hips and wrists, possession crawling across Shintarou's body like something alive.

Takao keeps his eyes open and kisses gasps out of Shintarou's mouth and watches tears cling to the longest eyelashes he thinks he'll ever see. Shintarou is flushed all the way to his collarbones and when Takao palms his erection he comes with a surprised yelp, eyes wide open and bitten-down nails digging purple welts into Takao's shoulders.

Takao wakes shivering, wanting to crawl out of his skin, and he hates himself.

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Takao only considers universities nearby and his mother cannot hide her delight when he tells her that he does not plan to move out yet. She smiles at him warmly and tells him that she would have supported any decision he'd made, but that she's glad he's staying because the boy next door would have been lonely otherwise. Takao nods, eyes cast somewhere to the right and chest tight.

"Really, I worry about him," she continues, taking a seat across from Takao at the kitchen table. "I never see him with any of his friends and his fingers are always bandaged. He used to bite his nails, does he still do that?"

"N-not really," Takao half-lies, thinking about the swollen cuticles he still sees sometimes. Basketball has helped – Shintarou's much more dedicated than anyone on the team had anticipated – and he keeps his fingers in better condition now that he knows he wants to shoot, but even now they still sometimes find the merciless edge of his teeth. The bandages are a more or less permanent fixture, keeping the rough texture of the ball from chafing at his raw skin.

"That's good," Takao's mother says, leaning over to ruffle his hair. "You keep being good to him." Takao nods and tries to shake the filthy images her words conjure.

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Takao asks, once, why Shintarou is obsessed with three-pointers.

"Because they are the most valuable," he answers, rolling the ball in his hands. Then, in a rare moment of vulnerability: "There is no worth to a person who cannot continuously prove his own value to be above that of others."

Shintarou's voice is mechanical and monotonous and he sounds like he is reciting something he has heard many, many times before. Takao thinks of the hours Shintarou has dedicated to shooting – hours which have somehow still not taken away from the hours he devotes to getting straight A's – and does not want to pursue it even though his guts clench a little at the thought.

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"Did you get permission?" Takao asks excitedly, bounding up to the middle school gates where Shintarou is waiting alone, uniform buttoned all the way up to his neck even though it's April and the weather's been warm and beautiful all week. Shintarou adjusts his glasses with a sigh and nods.

"My mother agreed, though reluctantly, that since my studies have been going smoothly, basketball camp would be an acceptable use of the summer, though I have no idea why you were so insistent about it."

"I was so insistent," Takao answers with a grin, "because I'll be a counselor there. Surprise!"

Shintarou is not surprised and says as much but Takao playfully nudges him and tells him that he'll be able to spend the whole summer with him and that he should be grateful. Shintarou huffs.

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Shintarou is too tall for thirteen years old, Takao thinks as he guards him, Takao's black hair matted to his forehead and obscuring his vision with a thin layer of sweat. They're the same height now and he's too tall and too haughty and all the other counselors can't stand him. He's barely breaking a sweat on the court and even Takao, who stumbles right into the faint as Shintarou swerves past him, can understand their hatred. Still, when the ball flies over his head in a clean arc from the three-point line, Takao's stomach flutters something urgent and obscene and he can't take his eyes off Shintarou's follow-through, long lines echoing a textbook precision to which Takao sometimes imagines he could set the laws of the universe.

Tall as he is, Shintarou doesn't look nearly as awkward or as gangly on the basketball court as he does off it, and when it's his turn to hover over Takao they're close enough that Takao can smell the sweat he can't see. The smell should be foul – the gross odor all the boys have grown accustomed to smelling in crowded locker rooms – but Takao is intoxicated and his pass goes awry, ball bouncing out of bounds and hurtling into the chain-link fence around the court. Shintarou scowls, unspoken rebukes etched into the crease between his brows and Takao, crouching and trying to catch his breath, forgets Shintarou's age.

"That was careless," Shintarou tells him, fetching the ball and tossing it back to him. "You know you shouldn't be going easy on me, right?"

It's me, not us – Shintarou outstrips the rest of his amateur team by leagues – and guilty heat pools in Takao's belly as he looks up, his eyes following the smooth, unbroken skin of Shintarou's still-developing calves.

"Such a slave driver!" Takao answers with a shaky laugh, taking Shintarou's outstretched hand and standing. "Shin-chan's just too good, I can't keep up all the time!"

Shintarou scowls and looks away but his cheeks color and one of the other counselors claps Takao on the back, calling an end to the game so they can all hit the showers before dinner. Now that he's standing still, Takao can feel his legs shaking and his heart beating in his ears and he laughs, leaning heavily on Shintarou and giddy with adrenaline. Shintarou sighs and rolls his shoulders, a sensuous movement that Takao can feel as the muscles honed from hundreds of hours of practicing three-pointers ripple against his own skin.

Shintarou takes the ball from Takao's hands when the other boys start leaving for the showers and he makes his way to three-point line with familiar purposefulness.

"Again, Shin-chan?" Takao whines, sinking into an exhausted crouch by the basket.

"Yes, again. You don't have to stay," he says, shooting an obnoxiously high arc from down the court with the precision of a machine.

"And let Shin-chan improve all by himself?" Takao responds with mock incredulity, catching the ball when it swishes through the hoop and half-heartedly throwing it back. "What kind of guy would I be?" The ball bounces with a dull thud at Shintarou's feet and he bends to retrieve it. Takao gets a quick glimpse of taut skin and looks away, fingers twitching.

Takao stays the extra thirty minutes – he always does, practicing his passes to the relentless rhythm of Shintarou's shots – and when Shintarou goes to put the balls away, Takao runs to the showers so he can jerk himself off quick and messy under the punishing, scalding spray of the showerhead.

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The boy who sits next to Takao in his Freshman Philosophy class has bright blond hair and the face of a model and when he leans over to ask Takao a question, Takao learns that he's also an idiot.

"What do you mean you can't tell the difference between Socrates and Plato?" Takao whispers, hiding the laughter bubbling up in his throat behind his hand. "The professor just spent the last twenty minutes explaining it!"

The boy shakes his head sheepishly and confesses to not paying attention but he looks up at Takao through hooded lids and it's such an attractive sight that Takao lends him the notes anyway. The boy thanks him with a blinding smile and introduces himself as Kise.

Takao finds himself at Kise's apartment at eleven o'clock that night to retrieve the notes and Kise invites him in with a wink and the promise of dessert. Takao wants to say no, that he should best be getting home and that Kise's fun, airheaded flirtation is cute but not really his type, but there's a basketball and knee braces peeking out from the open hall closet and Takao freezes.

Kise follows Takao's eyes and his shoulders slump just a little before straightening again as he turns back to Takao with an unfathomable and determined depth to his eyes that reminds Takao of Shintarou and all the nights he exhausts practicing and studying and tearing forward with a single-minded urgency that Takao doesn't want to admit scares him.

It attracts and unsettles him a little but Takao takes the bait and spends the next hour flat on his back, biting into the back of his hand to prevent himself from choking out the wrong name while Kise happily and nosily writhes above him. It's the first night in college he doesn't spend at home and before he falls asleep he texts Shintarou goodnight.

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Shintarou joins the high school basketball team his freshman year and the new victory-driven coach makes him a starter as soon as he sees how well he can shoot. Three weeks later Takao sees Shintarou being trailed home by a cute girl with bouncy pink pigtails and a boy his height with dark hair dyed blue.

"Oi, Midorima! This is going to be quick, right?" the boy asks with a yawn. "You teach me literature and then I can go, right?"

"Considering how much of an idiot you are, Aomine," Shintarou answers with a scowl, not even turning around to look at the boy, "I highly doubt it's going to be quick. And why are you here, Momoi? "

"To make sure Aomine actually studies," the girl answers with a sweet smile that doesn't entirely reach her eyes. "If he doesn't pass his classes he can't play in games, and coach will have a conniption if our most fearsome player has to sit on the bench because he's an idiot. Isn't that right, Aomine?" she asks, punching him roughly in the arm.

"Lay off," Aomine answers with a scowl, rubbing his arm. "You don't get to punch me just because you've known me since we were six. Let's just get this shit over with so I can go back to fucking around and staying as far away from this friendless nerd as possible."

"That's rude!" Momoi yells, punching him again.

Shintarou grumbles and lets them in and Takao is acutely aware that this is the first time he has seen Shintarou bring anyone else into his house.

Takao rings Shintarou's doorbell and invites himself to their study session, and by the time he leaves three hours later he harbors a budding resentment for the duo who casually leaned out Shintarou's bedroom window and shotgunned a blunt while Shintarou was in the kitchen making tea.

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Takao goes to Shintarou's first tournament game and even though their team is largely mediocre, Shintarou and Aomine are brilliant and unstoppable. Aomine moves like a feline across the court: formless, powerful and unpredictable. The whole arena has their eyes on him but Takao couldn't care less because Shintarou's shooting range has gotten longer again and his form is something breathtaking to behold, long arms and long legs perfect and bowstring tight as he shoots.

Shintarou's bandaged hands carry the ball with a sureness that's come and gone from him in waves since he was young but that now seems to be returning in a powerful, upward swell. If the only two things Shintarou can grasp now with steady hands are a basketball and the stress ball Takao knows he still keeps shoved in the back of his desk drawer, Takao thinks he's okay with that. He shouldn't be, he knows, because it's been years and Shintarou's fingers are still a raw, torn-up mess beneath the bandages, but there's a swooping warmth in Takao's stomach that only grows stronger – more consuming – when he thinks that it's only the things he has given Shintarou that keep the boy afloat.

Shintarou and Aomine score half the team's points by themselves and their team wins by a margin in the thirties, but victory is expected and no one celebrates.

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The coach stops mandating practice for Aomine and Shintarou when Aomine stops showing up even after being threatened with ejection from the team, Shintarou tells Takao one day when Takao shows up unannounced at Shintarou's doorstep for a visit. Shintarou, though, still goes to practice – still stays later than anyone else, doing shooting drills by himself – and Takao isn't surprised.

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Takao fantasizes about Shintarou, long legs wrapped around his waist, and sleeps with Kise thrice more, being rougher than he should be when Kise gets too loud – too wanton – and Takao's illusions shatter because Kise is not Shintarou, and Shintarou – his perfect, beautiful Shintarou – is _fourteen_.

Kise never complains when Takao manhandles him, though and he thinks they're supposed to be friends by the time Kise drops a basketball in his lap and demands a one-on-one after class. Takao wants to decline; he's exhausted and Kise is much too exuberant to face right now, but when the blond starts to beg, Takao relents, too tired to argue.

It's getting dark and the streetball court nearest to the university is crowded so Kise follows Takao to the next one, the one Takao played on when he was a kid. This one they find thankfully empty, at least until Takao hears an alarmed squeal and notices a flash of pink in the corner of the court furthest from the entrance.

Takao knows the couple hidden in the shadows of the trees even before Aomine turns around and shoves his hands in his pockets, not even trying to make it look like he didn't just have his hands up his girlfriend's skirt.

Kise covers his mouth, a tiny scandalized gasp leaving his lips as Momoi flushes and utters a rushed apology before grabbing Aomine by the wrist and darting away. Takao smells alcohol on Aomine as he passes and wants to say something, but holds his tongue and just glares. Aomine scoffs, calling Takao 'Shintarou's overprotective brother' and flips him off before the two of them disappear around the corner, a mother's worst nightmare in appropriately shaded pink and blue.

Takao, angry and shaken, loses his one-on-one with Kise by an abysmally large margin.

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Shintarou's basketball team wins the division in February and the team captain tries to host a celebration that Shintarou doesn't attend. Still, Shintarou doesn't come home that night and Takao, worried and unable to sleep, texts him seventeen times and stands vigil at the bedroom window that overlooks the street. It's still dark when Shintarou comes ambling down the street at six in the morning and before Takao knows it, he is barreling out the door and shoving Shintarou against the nearest upright surface – a telephone pole – demanding to know where he's been.

Shintarou's jacket is unzipped, his clothes are wrinkled, his hair is a mess, and his eyes are ringed with red. Takao smells weed and his fingers dig deep into the elbows of Shintarou's down jacket before he realizes that Shintarou is looking at him, wide-eyed and shaking. Takao lets go as though he's been scalded, but otherwise doesn't move, his question still hanging in the air between them.

"Aomine wanted us to have our own celebration," Shintarou says, and Takao bites the inside of his cheek, trying not to get angry.

"We just went to his house," he clarifies, "me, Aomine, and Momoi. It's cold. Can we please go inside?" Takao goes to take a step back, then reconsiders it and grabs Shintarou by the wrist.

"Come to my house," Takao says, pulling Shintarou behind him as he walks. "You'll scare your mother."

"I texted you," Takao says once they're sitting down in his room, Shintarou perched delicately on the edge of Takao's bed and Takao facing him with his arms draped over the edge of his desk chair.

"I know," Shintarou replies, digging his phone out of his pocket. "You texted seventeen times."

"Why didn't you answer?" Takao asks, fuming. "When someone texts you that many times, you answer them! I was worried!"

"I didn't realize you texted me so many times until I woke up this morning," Shintarou admits, not meeting Takao's eyes.

"What the hell were you doing that you didn't realize I was texting you all night?"

"Nothing," Shintarou says. "I wasn't expecting messages. My phone wasn't on me."

"You smell like pot."

"Aomine smokes." When Takao says nothing, Shintarou lies down and buries his face in Takao's pillow. Takao draws a sharp breath that he hopes Shintarou doesn't hear.

"If I can't go back to my own house, let me sleep here," Shintarou mumbles. "I didn't get much sleep last night." Takao just nods and Shintarou is asleep almost instantly.

It takes almost an hour for Takao to work up the nerve to run his fingers softly over Shintarou's face, tracing the features there with deliberate precision. Fingers trail the edge of Shintarou's chin, the bump of his Adam's apple, the elegant jut of a collarbone. Takao's hand stills when he reaches Shintarou's shirt collar and his fingers twitch toward the buttons before Shintarou sighs in his sleep and Takao snatches his hand away, heart hammering in his chest.

Takao briefly entertains the idea of lying down next to Shintarou and sharing in the boy's warmth, of curling into him and pressing their bodies together, but Shintarou shifts in his sleep and Takao snaps out of his delusion, the back of his neck burning in shame.

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Takao moves out senior year and ends up living two floors above Kise, half a mile from the university.

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Takao ends up in a seedy gay club with Kise on his twenty-first birthday and by midnight he's lost count of how many guys have bought him congratulatory drinks, lured in by Kise's good looks and loud voice as he drunkenly clings to an older man's arm and prattles on about how nice everyone is for treating them.

"I play basketball," Kise tells them proudly, leaning over the bar and reveling in the attention he gets when one of the braver men in the small crowd surrounding them smacks his ass with an amused "yeah? I can tell."

Takao looks into his glass and is glad he's drunk because Kise's flirtatious preening isn't nearly as amusing when he's sober. It's not really that much fun to watch when he's drunk either, Takao decides, putting down his glass and shuffling off to the bathroom.

"Whoa," Kise says, stopping Takao as he tries to walk away.

"Where are you going? Are you okay? Do you need me to come with you?" Kise's free hand comes to the back of Takao's neck and he reflexively leans into the warmth.

"Just need air," Takao answers, trying to be heard above the bass.

"Okay! Come back soon, though," Kise chirrups. "You can't be missing on your own birthday!" Takao nods and turns away, wobbly on his feet but upright enough to walk, and he makes it to the bathroom with relative ease.

Kise has flitted away by the time Takao emerges and Takao scans the crowd for shining gold hair, hoping to find him again amongst the crowd.

When Takao is instead met with familiar green eyes, though, panic floods his body and blood roars in his ears. Momoi and Shintarou and Aomine are pinned to the back wall of the club, Aomine's hands gripping Shintarou's hips and Momoi's crawling up his chest. Shintarou's head lolls back in pleasure and purpling bruises dot his exposed neck, hickeys and bite marks alike. The three of them are sharing a drink and Takao starts moving forward, tearing through the crowd with a fierce determination.

When he gets there, though, and almost stumbles into the three of them with all the urgent fervor of his run, he doesn't know what to do and stands there dumbly, the roaring still in his ears and the floor feeling like it's going to fall out from beneath him. Even though Shintarou is clearly intoxicated and his cheeks are pink with alcohol – a sight that sets a faint hum of arousal through Takao's blood – when he sees Takao his eyes widen and he instantly drops the drink in his hands.

For all Shintarou's showy display of surprise, however, it is Aomine who grins and speaks first, a low drawl into Shintarou's ear that is still loud enough for Takao to hear.

"Told ya he was a fag."

Takao's heart beats in his ears, a steady thrumming to the sound of Shintarou's name. _Shintarou, Shintarou, his Shintarou_. Takao acts on the first and only impulse that comes to mind. He pushes Shintarou out of the way and punches Aomine in the face.

Drunk and reeling from the sudden blow, Aomine stumbles back and Takao takes the opportunity to haul Shintarou forward by his shirtfront and drag him out of the club as Momoi rushes to Aomine's side. Takao thinks he can hear Kise's voice shouting his name as he makes his way out the door, but he does not look back and presses Shintarou to a dirty wall in the nearest alley.

"I didn't know you could fight," Shintarou finally says, trying to look Takao straight on but going cross-eyed instead. He is so drunk, Takao realizes. So, so drunk. Blackout drunk.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Takao thinks maybe he should be worried, but instead he reaches out to run his fingers over the bruises littering Shintarou's neck. When Shintarou doesn't push him away and just hums in response, Takao can feel something in him fracture and he hauls Shintarou down by the collar, running his tongue over the skin on Shintarou's neck before covering each mark he can reach with one of his own.

Shintarou sighs into Takao's hair and Takao is painfully hard and this necking in a filthy alley is not nearly enough. Takao's apartment is near enough and he pulls Shintarou with him, the both of them stumbling along in their intoxicated hurry. Takao keeps a firm grip on Shintarou's sleeve even as he unlocks his door to let them in, and he only lets go when he pushes Shintarou into the bedroom and tells him "stay, wait."

Takao staggers into the bathroom and splashes his face with icy water, not noticing that his hands are shaking until he tries to turn the tap off and struggles with it. He stays there in front of the mirror for as long as it takes for the trembling to stop, and by the time he makes it back to his bedroom, Shintarou has passed out on his bed, his arms curled around a pillow.

The unearthly, flickering glow of a streetlight casts a dim sliver of light across Shintarou's neck, and Takao realizes he has sobered up because the bruising there doesn't excite him anymore; instead, it looks like a warzone. Takao reaches out to trace the bruises again, but his fingers stop just short and he runs to the toilet, feeling like he's going to throw up, which he does twice before he can finally think clearly.

Takao tries to go back to his bedroom but his own audacity revolts him and he can't stay any longer than it takes to grab a pillow and a blanket so he can curl up on the couch, eventually falling asleep to the sound of his own heartbeat hammering violently against his chest.


End file.
